


One Worth Keeping

by Gimmesumsuga



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Dont want to give too much away, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurts So Good, Questionable choices with good intentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 00:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10730613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmesumsuga/pseuds/Gimmesumsuga
Summary: Sam can’t afford any more secrets.





	One Worth Keeping

I’ve always been good with words.  My school reports, my lengthy Stanford essay – memories of things that feel like they belong to another life, another Sam – it always came easy, and even now it’s me that does the talking when it matters most.  Act first and talk later is Dean’s style, but I’m more articulate, more persuasive.  It’s something I’ve always been proud of, even when my hot-headed big brother would call me a bookworm, or when dad used to shake his head as he watched me pour over a book report.  It took me 6 months to learn how to assemble a gun but words… words I just get.

Not right now, though; now my words are failing me.  My head’s empty, pen poised but woefully immobile as I stare at the few lines I have and realise how cruel it is to sit here in your house, at your table, using your own stationary to break your heart.

And there lies the problem; the subject matter, this whole hideous letter, is just too hard.  How am I supposed to find the right way to say that this can’t carry on?  That you’re never going to see me again?  To tell you that I’ll cherish the times we’ve had together, all the times you’ve made me feel normal and safe and soft when I’m anything but.

How do I write down how much I love you, and how much I’ll miss you, more than you can know?

Maybe I shouldn’t.  I can’t afford for you to know, or to make you feel how hard this is.  If you knew, you’d fight for me, fierce and stubborn as you are, and maybe I’d give in. It’d be too easy to stay and carry on with this little life we’ve made, comfortable as it is, and that can’t happen.

No more secrets, Bobby had said, no more secrets between Dean and me. I know he’s right.  We’re both old enough that we should know better, surely, after so many hidden things have come back to bite us. I can’t keep you from him anymore, and I can’t keep you from the life we lead forever.  I can’t keep you.

I won’t risk it.  The life Dean and I… I could never let it touch you or forgive myself if it sullied the kind, loving heart you gave to me so freely.  It’s better to give you up than have you taken, and that’s what’ll happen if I stay with you, if I stay selfish.  The thought of losing you, of something using you to get to me… I can’t…

The sound of your keys in the door startles me, the whole breath of my chest clenching in panic. You weren’t supposed to be home yet. I was supposed to do this and get out, sneak away like the coward I am, but now you’re here and now everything’s ten times more complicated than before.  

You beam a ‘hi’ and bounce across the kitchen, bubbliness only weighted down by the grocery bags hitched in the crook of your arms.  You’ve been to that over-priced deli across town to get chicken and chorizo for the stir-fry you tolerate only because it’s my favourite; you make it every time I stay. You tell me just that, glancing back over your shoulder as you stand on tip-toes to reach cupboards here and there, the cotton of your t-shirt sliding up to expose the small curves of flesh that bulge over the top of your jeans.  You hate it, I know, but my fingers still twitch with the impulse to caress that softest of skin, even as I’m trying to hide the words I’ve written under my too-long arms.  

You turn, leaning back against the counter with the widest of smiles, mouth moving a mile a minute as you tell me all about the pair of retriever puppies you saw at the store. You’re so easily delighted, so enthusiastic about anything and everything, and some might say you talk too much but to me the way your whole body moves with joyful expression just makes you seem all the more _alive_. So precious to a life like mine, touched by so much death.  

You tilt your head to ask if I’m alright and I realise how straight I’m sitting, how stiff, my face plastered with the blankest of looks in an attempt not to give myself away.  I force a breathy laugh, a shake of my head, allowing my shoulders to sag as I meet your questioning eyes.  I’m fine, of course I’m fine; I’m here with you and you’re walking over with sashaying hips and a soft smile.  You’re used to this, these times when I get lost inside my head. You never question too hard, choosing to ignore the troubled look behind my eyes or the furrow lines on my brow and focus on fixing it instead; just like now.  

God, how I love you.

You climb astride my lap, hitching a denim leg over each hip and sliding your small hands into my hair like you always do.  Your painted fingernails prickle against my scalp and despite everything, despite the letter I’m still trying to keep covered with the one arm that isn’t winding its way around your waist, I still end up leaning into your touch.  Even after all this time it’s frightening how badly I crave you; be it an hour, a day or a month since you were last in my arms.

Even more terrifying is the thought of never holding you again.

Your soft little mouth presses to mine, peppering kisses against my bottom lip until I start to kiss you back, and when I pull you even tighter to my chest with the coil of my arm you let out the sweetest of sighs.  You’re so content, so happy when I’m here, and as I slip my tongue between your smiling lips my stomach roils with self-loathing for ever wanting to hurt any part of you.  Like a china doll, you are, so delicately put together and just as breakable.  Far too innocent for the likes of me.

It’s easy enough to convince myself that it can wait, that a week or two more won’t hurt; especially when you’re tipping your head back so I can graze my teeth along your throat and making pretty sounds that have me straining against my zipper in thirty seconds flat.  You’re too good, too skilled in making me loose myself in the way your body bends and bows underneath my hands, and oh, I’m always so ready to get lost – to bury myself so deep that all there is and ever was and will be is you.  

You squeal as I stand with you in my arms, clinging on to my shoulders tight and only letting go when you’re sprawled on the kitchen table beneath me, practically squirming with excitement, hair fanned out across the cheap oak veneer.  You don’t try to slow me down when I go right for the buttons on your jeans, foreplay be damned; you already understand that the look on my face is synonymous with a desperate thirst that only you seem to quench.  

I’m biting on your bottom lip and sliding my fingers just inside the waistband of your underwear when I feel you twist, reaching into the curve of space between the table and the small of your back.  There’s a crisp crinkle as your fingers find paper and pull it free to look at whatever was scratching at your sensitive skin, and when I pull back to see you holding and de-creasing that god forsaken letter of mine it feels like my stomach has dropped through the floor.  

You smile, at first. You’re amused, playing keep-away when I try to snatch it from your hand, stuttering nonsense when you ask me what I’ve been up to.  You tease me, hoping for a love letter or other sweet rhyming words, shimmying out from underneath my grasp to return to that spot against the kitchen counter where you lean as you did before, one bare leg crossed over the other.  

I can only watch on in horror, impotent to stop the events unfolding before me, as your smile slowly morphs into a confused frown.  Your eyes flick up to the top of the page, scanning it again, darting this way and that as if you’re checking that you read it right, and all the while your chest starts to rise and fall with an increasing weight.  I, for the most part, try not to vomit where I stand.  

**“I wish I could tell you all my secrets…. But you’ve become one of them…?”**

I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look as you do now; your face twisted in horror and disbelief, brandishing my own words at me, paper shaking in your hand.  You ask me what this is, what I mean, your eyes turning glassier by the second with tears that mercifully remain un-spilt.

Words have abandoned me, again.  Rendered me mute.  All I can do is shrug, standing smaller than I ever have in my life, staring at your tiles and hating every inch of myself, right down to my rotten core.  My silence enrages you, rightly so, and now you ball up the paper in your fist and throw it at me.  It bounces uselessly off my shoulder as you begin to shout and scream.

How could I do this to you?! After all that you’ve put up with from me, coming and going as I please! You never ask where I am, where I go, why there are blood stains on my shirts and my jeans and under my fingernails! You never ask anything of me, you never try to make me stay longer than I can.  You’ve done everything for me, given up everything for me when I just breeze in and out.  God, what an idiot you are.  How could I? How could I?!

I wish I knew what to say. I wish I could give you any answer that’d stop the tears that are sliding down your cheeks, or unwind your fingers from where they’ve knotted through your hair.  My mouth opens and shuts uselessly as you stare up at me, silently begging me to tell you that none of this is true, and god I wish I could. Instead I just shrug and look away, trying to choke down the lump in my throat and hide the shake of my exhale.  

Abruptly you turn and begin frantically rooting around the last of your grocery bags, the muscles of your shoulders bunched and tense under your t-shirt.   Despite all my instincts telling me otherwise I cautiously approach, one hand just reaching out to touch the curve of your waist when you turn again.  Your eyes aren’t wet anymore, just blood-shot and blazing, glancing down at my outstretched hand before slapping a small slip of paper into my palm.  

You growl at me to read. You were keeping it for after dinner, you bitterly add, but why wait?  Confused and curious I turn my attention to the neat machine-printed text, acutely aware of your gaze burning holes into the top of my head.

Mid-stream specimen positive.  Results indicative of pregnancy approximately 4-5 weeks gestation.

For a few moments I swear my heart stops beating but now it’s back with a vengeance, pounding in my chest, blood roaring in my ears as I look up at you in disbelief.  How could you be…  We haven’t used protection in a long time but your pills, you said…

Pregnant.  

Your expression isn’t as hostile anymore; instead you look like you’re gauging my reaction, stood there with your arms folded and worrying your lip with your teeth.  Hope, that’s what it is, and it feels like a stab to the gut when I recognise it.  You’re hoping that this’ll change my mind, that it’ll make me stay and give me a reason to commit.  Make what this is between us something more permanent, stable, constant.  

I wish it was, I really do. I place the slip onto the kitchen table, sliding it away from myself as far as I can with a shake of my head.  My stomach is still churning and my hands are still shaking, but what I came here to do is now all the more important. This news, your pregnancy, brings everything a crystal clear clarity.

I _will not_ bring a child into this life; into a world where the monsters under the bed are real, the dark really is something to be afraid of and Latin is only learnt out of necessity rather than any interest.   I could never forgive myself for inflicting any of it on something so innocent, on a child that could have a choice or take chances that I never had.  I won’t keep this line going.  I won’t be part of raising more Winchesters that are ultimately doomed to die; throat ripped out, burning in hellfire.

I won’t do the things my father did.  

It’s too late for me and it’s too late for Dean, but it’s not too late for our… for _your_ baby.  You’ll tell me that I’m cruel and I’m callous and you’ll hate me, almost as much as I hate myself, but it’ll be worth it.  Anything is worth the chance for a child to grow up happy and safe and loved, even if it’s without a father figure, somewhere far away from me.  

You’ll be a natural mother; how could you be anything but when you’ve got so much love to give?  With a mother like you to care for them, to read them bedtime stories in your softest of voice, to press kisses to grazed knees, to cheer them on at their baseball games… They’ll be fine.  You’ll both be fine.  You’ll find someone to love you again, to fill the space that I’ve left, and it’ll be so easy that just thinking about it makes me feel sick. Now there’s two of you to protect, not just one, and jealousy isn’t a feeling I can afford.  

I won’t do nothing.  I’ll check in, somehow, at arm’s length… make sure you’re both ok.  I’ll… I’ll make an account or something.  I’ll put money aside, save what I can and maybe when they’re eighteen it might help them get to college, so they stick it out like I never could.  They’ll have so many maybes, so many possibilities without me here, so much more than just hunting and death.  

I tell you that I can’t do this, as gently as I can, that I never wanted something long-term or ever wanted children. The lies leave a bad taste in my mouth and make you cry all the more as you wrap your arms around your stomach like a protective shield. The only truth is that you’re better off without me, both of you are, and eventually you’ll see that too.  

Words have failed you now, too.  It’s all you can do to calm the shaking of your delicate shoulders and fight the heaving of your breaths, and when I finally fall silent I know there’s nothing left for either of us to say. The damage has been done… there’s no coming back from this.  

I quietly collect the small amount of things I’ve left here over our time together, a few shirts, a couple books, and all the while waiting for you to say something or for you to start fighting, but you don’t.   I’d like to pretend it makes it easier, but that’d be just another lie.  It’s only out of necessity that I hold back the tears and choke back the lump in my throat.  I’m glad that you can’t bring yourself to look at me as I look at you this one last time, and though it’s not how I want to remember you - small and broken, half naked and shivering - I just… have to.  Soon my memories of you will be all I have.

One more sorry, as if an apology will ever be enough, one that don’t acknowledge.

I pretend not to hear you whisper that you love me as I leave. 

* * *

A year’s gone by since I walked out of your life, a year without as much as a backward glance.  Dean and I have had plenty to keep us busy, an understatement if ever there was one, but even with the Darkness filling my thoughts and my time, still, you’re always there.  I miss you every single day but somehow I manage to stay strong, to keep myself away even in the darkest of hours when all I want is to find my way back into your arms.  

It’s a year before I find myself scouring the birth registry of the local hospital for your name.  I’d only meant to hack into the system for a coroner’s report… now I’m holding my breath and scrolling with a shaking hand, looking, searching… June, July…

A healthy baby girl born at the end of July to a woman with your name.

A daughter.  I have a daughter.

The tears I’ve been holding back for so long finally fall,  hot and heavy, but I’m smiling through them, the wind knocked out of me but chest swelling with something unknown all the same.  You carried on, you kept the pregnancy… I’d always worried you’d…

God, I have a daughter. I imagine her, a baby two months old and tiny with your eyes, and my arms feel heavy with a longing to hold a child I’ve never even met.  I’m so glad you’re safe.  The pain of staying away and the aching of my heart is a small price to pay to protect you both, my two girls.  Even a million miles away, you’ll always be my girls.  Always.  

I’m only just pulling myself together when Dean puts his head round my bedroom door, frowning at my red-rimmed eyes and asking if I’m ok.  I nod and smile and dismiss it and Dean’s more than happy to let it go, our latest case a far more comfortable topic than any heart to heart I might have brewing.  No more secrets, Bobby had said, and I tried, I really did.  I should feel guilty or worried but I just don’t have it in me.  

These two girls that I’ll keep close to my chest, locked safe in my heart… You’re a secret worth keeping. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is appreciated :)


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